Ta classics of any nation are the richest blossoms of its literature. Genius and tradition combine to give them a charm which other writings cannot possess. The Chinese Classics consist of ancient ry, poetry, a guide to divination, ions usages and philosophical dis~ cussions. They are so much more important because they are the literary productions of a people which is at once as old us Greece and Rome and as modern as England and Franor. The ancient Greeks and Romans wrote their classics and declined in energy not long afterwards. We have their booke, but not the same powerful nationalities whose thought found expression in those immortal works, The Chinese wrote theirs, and bavemaintained their national existence until now, undecaying and still prosperous, It is true of the Chinese Classics as it is of those of Europe that the course of ages has ornamented them with the mellow tints of an quiry. The Innguage has not changed so mach as to render them unintelligible to the people; as the centuries roll away a uew chain is added to this old world relics. Love for their Classics marke the Chinese character as much as it ever did. Since the invention of printing there has been an immense inorerse in the number of renders of these pooka, and in every part of the country they are the test books in schools, and are used as texts by which to guage the fi tue for office of candidates at the public ex. aminations, They nourish the.national intellect and minister to the national patriotism, In appreciating Chinese opinions and national characteristics it is essential to read thole Classics The Li-chi is the fifth of the El It line boon translated into French by J, M, Callery, but ie now for the firet time rendered into English by Professor Legge of Oxford. It makes two volarness of the "Sacred Books of the East" edited by Professor Max Muller. To obtain insertion in that series it was necessary that the books should be reli" gious. This is more fall of religions observances than any other of the Chinese Classics, and therefore its claim to a place among the Sacred Books of Asia has been recognized after the Book of History, the Buck of Odes and the Li Ching had been admitted. It is obatacteristic specimen of ancient se thought on religion, There is in it abundance of information on sacrifices, but nothing on the nature and attributes of God, or upon the future state, or on the destiny of the haman sou). It is very minute and careful in its inculcation of the duties of man, his behaviour in the school, the family, the court, the city, at the ancestral tomb;—not a word of speculation on those awful themes which had an indescribable interest for Socrates and Cicero. It is a text book of the disciples of Confucius, and exs presses what was important in thei view in the fourth and fifth oentui before Christ,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.